


Good Night

by Taste_of_Suburbia



Category: The Brothers Grimm (2005)
Genre: Angst, Captivity, Gen, Implied/Referenced Mind Control, Mindfuck, Nightmares, Post-Film, Tragedy, Transformation, Trope Bingo Round 14, h/c_bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:34:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24991612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taste_of_Suburbia/pseuds/Taste_of_Suburbia
Summary: Fate is a wicked mistress, though nothing feels so cruel as being replaced by something you’ve spent your entire life not believing in.
Kudos: 2
Collections: Hurt/Comfort Bingo - Round 11, Trope Bingo: Round Fourteen





	Good Night

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Trope Bingo Round 14’s prompt [Transformations](https://immolate-the-silence.dreamwidth.org/47728.html). Also a fill on my h/c_bingo Round 11 card for [Captivity](https://immolate-the-silence.dreamwidth.org/67435.html). 
> 
> **Soundtrack:** Title comes from Mountaineer’s song of the same name.

“Will, are you paying attention?”

He nodded, perusing their list again while his brother babbled on. He had never felt more useless in his life, except for maybe their first encounter with an _actually_ enchanted forest. Moreover, the stabbing pain in his chest was increasing daily. It was all he could do not to cry out, and he often could not stop his hand from rubbing the sore patch of skin over his heart in an attempt to soothe the burn, which was foolish in and of itself because there was no mark, no proof that he was even suffering at all.

 _It’s all in your head, Wilhelm Grimm. There is no pain, only the memory of it, and no matter how real it may feel it is only proof that you are_ cracking.

Given how much the lives of the great Brothers Grimm had changed, he now delineated a new turning point in his life; before it had been the death of Lotte and the resulting death of innocence, now it was the time before the Mirror Queen and the time after. Except... there was no _after_ the Mirror Queen; there was no killing her or her influence, and there was absolutely no severing her grip on him.

Jake either did not notice or had not the time to. There was no time for anything anymore. If they had been famous before Marbaden, it certainly was nothing like what they were experiencing now. While Will had once stressed the careful planning of a job, wallowing in details while Jake remained with his head mostly in the clouds, jotting down superstitions as if they were lessons in future utility, now they were rushing head-first into one village after another, thrusting themselves impetuously into danger, and their bodies were all the worse for wear for it. Jake had already broken his glasses thrice and had borne his fair share of minor injuries with an occasional broken bone.

Will, on the other hand, past cuts bordering on severity and bruises that ached for days, had succumbed to numerous fevers throughout the course of a mere six months, and was used to trudging through a case as if he were traveling through a hell-scape, fire licking at his head and feet and everywhere it could reach. This paired with chronic sleeplessness made him slow and hesitant and even confused, but what it really made him was dead weight.

Had fate turned on him so much so that they could no longer be what they had been, let alone hope to be better?

On the nights where he did find sleep, there was no comfort to be had. Jake’s hand was pushing the blade forever forward, piercing his chest, rupturing his internal organs, Will screaming a senseless plea for reprieve and yet only an echo of his own pitiful, hollow voice resounding. All the while, the blade was thrust in ever deeper, his vision graying out, his hands reaching out, his heart crying out until darkness silenced it with a final blow, until he was crawling through the ancient murkiness to reach a beacon of light, until delicate hands lifted him, cupped his face, pushed a symbol of her love and devotion into the space where the blade had been, replacing memory, replacing _Jakob_.

Jake was no longer at the desk, scribbling to his heart’s content. Time must have passed and with it, the soup having long grown cold, Will’s fingers having grown stiff with it. He dampened them with a tongue, felt little, heart seizing as if in response, palms slamming against the table.

“Jake!” He bellowed.

It was too cold to go outside and he couldn’t find his coat. It didn’t matter. His boots held up against the snow, carrying him through the trees, carrying him somewhere he didn’t know, maybe too far away so that he could never get back but no, he couldn’t think, not now. The wind was pressing in on him, the branches grasping for him, Grandmother Toad croaking close enough ahead where she might be discovered just in time.

But for what?

_For Jake. I have to find Jake. Or not. Have I already left Jake behind, should I turn back?_

He turned, his footprints already swallowed up, his tongue a leaden weight in his mouth restricting him from making his presence known, to scream out to the forest and to the world that he was still here. Had he already been forgotten?

Will couldn’t remember the way back now. It didn’t matter.

“ _This is not your world, Will!”_

He spun at the outburst, round and round, the forest closing in on him with every breath. Had he been tricked? Was he dreaming?

“ _Don’t push me away, Jakob. Don’t leave me behind again for pursuit of something better.”_

Will recognized him escaping through the tress, bag slapping against his thigh. He pressed forward to follow and then stopped, frozen in place by sharp, fire-bitten fingers cupping his face, his forehead and jaw, pinching his cheek. A honeyed kiss whispered against his lips, teasing, _achingly_ familiar.

“ _My sweet new prince. Say it.”_

The words came easily, torn from a part of him just as sure as would be welcome in his brother’s sacred book.

“ _You’re the fairest of them all.”_

And Jake came back to claim what was rightfully his.

“ _No! Don’t kiss...”_

Time erupted and with it, so did _she._

The snow was pressing in on him like a _mountain_ , his body unprepared for the onslaught and already _crumbling._

_"Can’t you see, brother? How I can be a part of this world? Don’t you want me to be, or have you already left me behind?”_

The truth was colder than any winter storm, finite in its blanketing of anything that held any measure of importance.

_That’s right, you have, that knife was her magic but it was your will, subconscious, never intentional but a product of your desperation to have your world be real, to play the hero, to justify your magic beans._

_But that’s how all this mess started between us, brother, those damn beans. And now that I believe in magic, it doesn’t matter. It’s simply too late._

And again. “This is not your world, Will!” And again and again and again until the miasma of agony was leaking into every crevice, lurking behind every shadow, until all the shame he had put Jakob through could start to be paid, until Will finally understood. “This is not your world, Will!”

_You’re right, Jake. This isn’t my world. It isn’t one where we can be the Brothers Grimm. You’ll go on, Jakob. You’ll go on and do great things but this is too grand and complicated and unpredictable and terrifying for me. Don’t you see... how I’m not cut out for it? Don’t you see how I struggle every day to be half as brave as you are?_

_Can’t you see how there’s no choice left for me but to bow out?_

And all the while he could feel her, all the more whenever Jakob’s half-pleading eyes landed on him, every time he reached out with good intentions and pulled back before contact, before those intentions could turn bad. Will had long wondered whether his brother’s touch would scare her away or if it would hurt all the more, and yet he could hear her laughing like a wicked child each time his brother shut him out for fear of something nameless between them.

Will shuddered in the cold, made more pronounced by the absence of the only thing in this world he gave a damn about, not the money, certainly not the magic. His overtaxed body would have toppled over into the snow were it not for _her_ invisible hands steadying him.

 _Am I merely alive to be her puppet?_ He pondered, with enough conviction to convince him. _She must know how terrified Jake is still, and I know full well my betrayal of him and of our situation when I so much as think it. Because she is here, in my heart, because she has never left._

_Jake…_

He could feel himself squirming in her hold, his heart beating so fast until her hands closed over it and he could hear it and need bear its agony no longer. Will was slipping again into that icy darkness, the only warmth to be found bright orbs of light at first glance benign and then unmasked, devilish starlight encasing him until nothing of his perception of the world remained.

And when his brother called out his name in what could have been panicked apology or the bitter impatience of late, those four letters able to emit so much depth and range of emotion in only that _one_ voice, he no longer recognized it past those first few moments of selfish desperation and somehow entirely unselfish love.

It was all she saw fit to spare him before her hold was absolute.

**FIN**

**Author's Note:**

> So yes, I am evil, the Mirror Queen comes back to claim Will and Jake is too preoccupied to prevent it from happening. But of course, somewhere in my head Jake goes after Will and eventually they do get their happily ever after.
> 
> I can’t not see Will being continually haunted by Jake’s words. Let’s face it, when they had a desire to, both brothers could cut each other pretty deep with their petty insults. There’s also plenty of back story worth thinking about, like Jake going away to university pre-film and the thought that maybe Will didn’t go with him and could have felt abandoned as a result, leading to Will dragging him out at some point, hence Jake’s resentment of their con-man lifestyle. Plus, Will’s whole struggle with believing in magic probably continues on post-film and has repercussions, because these brothers are just too damn unlucky to have a purely happy ending without a ton of trouble and angst on the road to get there.
> 
> I just love this film, okay, and I have waaaaay too many feelings about it. Check out my dreamwidth [blog](https://immolate-the-silence.dreamwidth.org/tag/fandom:+brothers+grimm) for more shameless Brothers Grimm creations if you’re as hung up over this film as I am.


End file.
